Friday, September 07, 2012

Elizabeth Warren's image troubles

Here's the Christian Science Monitor on Elizabeth Warren's DNC speech:Here’s the way Warren put it Wednesday night: Romney “wants to give
tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. But for middle class families
who are hanging by their fingernails? His plans will hammer them with a
new tax hike of up to $2,000 dollars.”She’s not the only Democrat who’s said this from the podium this week. Keynote speaker San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro said pretty much the same thing, for instance. The only problem is that strictly speaking it is not true, according to FactCheck.org.“Democrats base their claim on a study that doesn’t necessarily lead to that conclusion,” says the FactCheck.org site.

If that were Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, they could roll with it. Neither has the image problem Elizabeth Warren does. She is now seen as lying about who she was to get benefits -- specifically falsely claiming to be Native American.

That broke weeks ago and it is not going away. I had to go to the grocery store this evening and what did I find? Every person I knew stopping me and asking if I'd heard Warren's latest whopper.

Some of what she said was actually accurate.

But her reputation is so bad that she's considered to have lied about everything in her speech.

The smartest thing she could have done was gotten honest and said something like, "Look, in the 90s, I was new to the faculty and nervous and I claimed Native American status even though I wasn't. It was a dumb thing to do and something I'm embarrassed about."

Instead she's now got such a poor reputation that even if she tells the truth she becomes a joke because people assume she's lying.

This wasn't one person or two or five. This was over 20 people and I was in the store for less than 15 minutes.

Thursday,
September 6, 2012. Chaos and violence continue, who wants credit for
the state of Iraq today, could the runaway president Jalal be an answer
for Iraq, Barack becomes the Democratic Party's presidential nominee,
and more.

Tonight in North Carolina, President
Barack Obama will formally be crowned the Democratic Party nominee for
president. Will a sitting president speak in a presidential manner or
will he echo the strident partisan tone, the ugly us-and-them that has
so dominated the DNC? If he's trying to remind people of what they saw
in him in 2008, he'll be presidential and not divisive.

If
he's going to be presidential, that will need to include thanking Bully
Boy Bush for Iraq and not playing glory hog. At Never Gives Credit
But Loves To Rip Us Off (so we don't link to them), Stephanie Gaskell is
yammering away in that idiotic manner that's so popular at the
news-lette. She seems astounded that Republicans might argue Bush
deserves credit for ending the Iraq War.

This is not difficult, this is not hard.

Barack
Obama promised the American people troops would be out of Iraq ten
months after he was sworn in. A promise broken. When did they leave?
At the end of 2011.

Senators Barack Obama and
Joe Biden opposed the Status Of Forces Agreement of the Bush
administration. They dropped their opposition to it, right after Barack
was elected president -- going so far to vanish their opposition from
the campaign site. But they both campaigned on opposing the SOFA. They
campaigned on it, Barack show-boated on it and I can quote snapshot
after snapshot on Joe's remarks on the SOFA.

So what ended the Iraq War? (It hasn't ended but let's pretend.)

The SOFA. Did Barack negotiate it?

Nope.

It's the Bush administration. It's Condi, and Bush and Cheney and Stephen Hadley and others.

They're the ones who ended the Iraq War.

The only way Barack gets credit is if you believe as Senator John McCain did. Remember what he believed? From the November 16th snapshot:

What
McCain stated he was hearing from Iraqis -- including Nouri al-Maliki
-- was that the US would not provide a plan. Graham, Lieberman and
McCain all noted repeatedly that they spoke to Nouri, that they spoke to
the Kurds, that they spoke to Osama al-Nujaifi (Speaker of Parliament,
Iraqiya member and a Sunni). There was not opposition from these
groups, the three stated repeatedly. This was Lindsey Graham's point in
his first round of questioning. He walked it through slowly with
Panetta and then noted that he'd gone slowly and done so for a reason,
he stated that when you had all of that support (and Panetta agreed on
the Sunni issue, the Nouri issue and on the Kurds that they would have
-- the Kurds -- gone for as many as 50,000 US troops), how did you fail
to make a deal? McCain felt that the White House didn't want to make a
deal and presented that feeling as fact. Graham agreed with him about
the failure and wanted to point out that the whole thing -- Iraq plus
Afghanistan -- seemed to be done for votes and that it was interesting
that Panetta was willing to talk about and explore the Iraqi political
situation but no one wanted to talk about the American one. From his
remarks in the hearing, Lieberman agreed it was a failure but did not
form an opinion as to why it failed.

This was their
argument, they repeated it over and over. They never once said, "We can
force Iraq to do this!" Or that Iraq should have been forced. Their
argument was that they speak with these politicians (including Nouri)
often and that they knew what the Iraqi politicians were open to and
that they couldn't believe that with what Iraq was willing to go along
with the White House couldn't get a deal. If they're right about what
the Iraqi politicians were willing to go for (I believe them because
I've heard similar from the administration), then that was a significant
moment and one that history books will review -- as McCain himself
noted. I disagree -- again based on what I've heard from administration
friends -- that the White House intended to torpedo the agreement. But
that's my opinion and I could be wrong (and often am). McCain may have
hurt his own argument by presenting it so forcefully -- you'll note that
the presentation and not the substance is what the 'reporters'
focused on. Had he turned it into a question -- the way Lindsay Graham
did -- it might have led to many headlines. Then again, it's a lazy
press. Most likely they would have just seized upon another trivial
moment to run with. (We don't have space for a full transcript. But
some of McCain's remarks on this were included in yesterday's snapshot
and Kat's report last night included much more from McCain where he made
the argument that the Iraqi leaders wanted US troops but the White
House failed when they repeatedly had no plan to present.)

Now
if you're willing to join with McCain and accuse Barack of deliberately
attempting to destroy his own negotiations, then Barack deserves
credit.

Otherwise, Bully Boy Bush is
responsible so Barack may need to share half that already laughable
Nobel Peace Prize with George W. Bush.

I have no idea why anyone would want to claim 'credit' for Iraq because Iraq's falling apart.

And people are complaining about the lack of any American influence. Eli Lake (Daily Beast) interviewed Sheikh Ahmad Abu-Risha about the Sahwa ("Awakenings," Sons Of Iraq) and reports:

Rather,
he is most concerned that his relationship with the U.S. military has
appeared to halt. He said he was assured by U.S. military leaders that
he would receive regular visits from senior figures and diplomats to
discuss the relationship that began in Anbar back in 2006 and 2007.
"There is no contact right now," he said. "They don't visit at all. Ever
since the United States withdrew, we haven't gotten anyone to visit."

Jeffrey,
who left his post as ambassador at the end of May, said the meetings
have not yet happened because without the U.S. military in Iraq it's
difficult for U.S. officials to travel to Anbar. "We have every
intention of maintaining contact with the awakening and other people,"
Jeffrey said. "We had several meetings after the military completed its
withdrawal with tribal sheikhs from the greater Baghdad area, but it's
been hard to get people out to Anbar because of the security situation."
A White House spokesman declined to comment for the story.

No
surprise, that lack of contact and travel; it was precisely what
numerous observers, including me, expected would happen when U.S. troops
would pull out. But State Department and administration spokesmen spent
years assuring anyone who would listen that even with the troops gone, a
mega-embassy relying on some 15,000 contractors could continue to carry
on vital missions. Now the falsity of those claims has been starkly
revealed: U.S. diplomats, devoid of military support for transportation,
find it hard to get out of their own embassy in the old Green Zone,
thus leaving the old Awakening leaders to find for themselves even as
Prime Minister Maliki's increasingly sectarian security forces
increasingly persecute high-profile Sunnis including Vice President
Tariq al Hashemi.

And of course it's
also very difficult to spearhead a diplomatic mission when you have no
Ambassador to Iraq. We are aware of that, right?

Not
only is Iraq falling apart but Barack's Ambassador to Iraq quit. I'm
sorry, Barack's second ambassador quit (James Jeffrey) as did his first
(Chris Hill). Two in four years. Iraq needed stability. Barack wasn't
able to provide it.

And people are still risking death to get out of Iraq. Christopher Torchia and Jonathan Burch (Reuters) notes women and children among the people on a boat that became submerged. Xinhua notes
the people who lived through the sinking were "mostly from Iraq and
Syria" while the dead includes a large number of Palestinians and
Syrians -- "12 men, 18 women, 28 children and 3 babies" died. Hugh Naylor (The National) reports,
"Turkey's Dogan News Agency reported dozens of survivors swimming to
shore from the scene of the accident, about 50 metres out to sea,
suggesting it occurred shortly after the vessel, a fishing boat,
departed. It was unclear when it set sail, but most such attempts occur
at night so as to avoid capture by sea patrols." The ship was part of
the underground railroad of migration taking part around the world as
people risk everything to try to find a better life.

On the subject of Turkey and Iraq, theJerusalem Post notes Turkish warplanes and helicopters began another attack on a region of northern Iraq said to be home to the PKK. Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) reported yesterday, "The sites targeted were
in the mountains, and so far officials have not provided any clue as to
how many casualties the air strikes caused. In the past major
offensives by Turkish forces the defense ministry has issued a final
toll only, and not daily updates." Prensa Latina explains,
"The start of the operation had been announced three years ago by
provincial governor Vahdettin Ozkan in the wake of clashes between the
Turkish army and militants of the separatists Kurdistan Workers' Party
that resulted on 10 troops and 20 Kurds killed." Seyhmus Cakan (Reuters) adds, "Turkey
has stepped up air operations on suspected PKK rebels in northern Iraq
over the past year after an increase in PKK attacks. The raids have
fuelled tension between Ankara and the KRG." The PKK? Aaron Hess (International Socialist Review) described the PKK in 2008,
"The PKK emerged in 1984 as a major force in response to Turkey's
oppression of its Kurdish population. Since the late 1970s, Turkey has
waged a relentless war of attrition that has killed tens of thousands of
Kurds and driven millions from their homes. The Kurds are the world's
largest stateless population -- whose main population concentration
straddles Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria -- and have been the victims of
imperialist wars and manipulation since the colonial period. While
Turkey has granted limited rights to the Kurds in recent years in order
to accommodate the European Union, which it seeks to join, even these
are now at risk."

The conflict has been going
on for years now and violence breeds violence, vengeance begats
vengeance. There have not been a lot of honest efforts to address the
situation. Hurriyet Daily News examines the issues starting with a look at mistakes made:

-
One of Turkey's two biggest mistakes was to not take any notice of our
Kurdish citizens, to disregard their fundamental rights and to treat
them as third class citizens. The second big mistake was to delegate the
Kurdish issue and PKK
terror to the military from the 1980s to 2003. The military used the
only policy it knew: pressurizing, burning villages, banning Kurdish,
instigating fear, committing unresolved murders, and bombing. Thousands
of Kurds left the country for Europe, to form a very effective
anti-Turkish, pro-PKK lobby. The PKK gained sympathy and power both domestically and abroad.

- When it was finally understood that the PKK
had originated from the Kurdish issue and at the basis of the issue
were social, cultural and ethnic causes, it was already too late.

- Ankara never had a realistic and courageous strategy except for armed struggle (between 1980 and 2003).

- The most dramatic mistake was that after Öcalan was caught in 1998 and made his guerillas leave the country, Ankara acted as if everything was over. The PKK launched itself into terror again in 2006.

-
In 2009, the lack of adequate preparation for the Kurdish initiative
resulted in nothing but a show of power. This historic opportunity was
wasted.

Violence continues in Iraq. Trend News Agency notesDPA is reporting an al-Sharqat car bombing has claimed the life of Colonel Ismail al-Jaburi. Alsumaria adds that the bomb was an IED and that it also left his driver injured. In addition, theJerusalem Post notes Turkish warplanes and helicopters began another attack on a region of northern Iraq said to be home to the PKK. Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) reported yesterday, "The sites targeted were
in the mountains, and so far officials have not provided any clue as to
how many casualties the air strikes caused. In the past major
offensives by Turkish forces the defense ministry has issued a final
toll only, and not daily updates."

Staying with violence, last
week Nouri's Baghdad-based government executed at least 26 people
bringing the 2012 total to at least 96 so far. Ipek Yezdani (Turkish Weekly) reports
Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi has written a formal request to
President Jalal Talabani in which he calls for Jalal "to stop the
arbitrary and ever-increasing rate of executions in Iraq." He notes
that Jalal can stop the executions at any point in his role as
president. Alsumaria adds that Minister of Justice Hassan al-Shammari declared today that the use of the death penalty should be blowed down. Dar Addustour notes
a Tikrit prison saw riots this week over the transfer of prisoners to
Baghdad -- including some who have been sentenced to death.

In other violence, Alsumaria reports
that armed forces in police uniforms attacked various social clubs in
Baghdad yesterday, beating various people and firing guns in the air.
They swarmed clubs and refused to allow anyone to leave but did make
time to beat people with the butss of their rifles and pistols, they
then destroyed the clubs. AFP adds,
"Special forces units carried out near-simultaneous raids at around
8:00 pm (1700 GMT) on Tuesday 'at dozens of nightclubs in Karrada and
Arasat, and beat up customers with the butts of their guns and batons,'
said an interior ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
'Artists who were performing at the clubs were also beaten,' the
official said." The assaults were ordered by an official who reports
only to Nouri al-Maliki. In related news the Great Iraqi Revolution posted video Friday
of other attacks on Iraqi civilians by security forces and noted, "Very
important :: a leaked video show Iraqi commandos during a raid to Baaj
village and the arrest of all the young men in the village .they
threatened the ppl of the village they will make them another Fallujah
and they do not mind arresting all village's men and leave only women .
they kept detainees in a school, and beating them, u can see they burned
a car of one of the citizens"

Alsumaria notes
that Iraqiya, led by Ayad Allawi, has called out the assault on the
social clubs and states that it is violation of the Constitution as well
as basic human rights. Iraqiya spokesperson Maysoun al-Damalouji
called on the security forces to respect the rights of the citizens. Tamim al-Jubouri (Al Mada) adds
that the forces working for Nouri attacked many clubs including Club
Orient which was established in 1944 and that the patrons including
Chrisitans who were surprised Tuesday night when Nouri's forces
entered and began breaking furniture, beat patrons and employees and
stole booze, cell phones and clothing. So they're not only bullies,
they're also theives. Kitabat notes
that the people were attacked with batons and gun butts including a
number of musicians who were performing live in the club including
singer Hussein Basri. Alsumaria adds that the Baghdad Provincial Council states that they were not informed of the assaults on social clubs.

The political stalemate continues. Mustafa Habib (Niqash) reports that some feel the return of Iraq's vagabond president Jalal Talabani may allow for resolution:

Talabani
is widely seen as the prime mover behind calls for a National
Conference, during which, it's been proposed, all Iraq's political
parties should resolve the impasse that has virtually handicapped the
local political system at times. Over the past few months the three main
groups involved in Iraqi politics – the two religious sects, the Sunni
Muslims and the Shiite Muslims, and the Kurdish ethnic group – have
failed to resolve their differences.

Yet
the past few days have seen more hope and even some optimism about
finding a resolution to these accumulated differences. Over the past
week Talabani has been making phone calls from Germany, setting up
meetings and preparing mediation. On August 19, the first day of the
celebration of the major religious celebration Eid, Talabani gave a
speech stressing the importance of a National Conference.

"The
last few days have seen a decline in the intensity of the crisis that
has troubled the Iraqi skies," Talabani said during the speech, before
concluding that any solutions developed at the National Conference must
be sustainable and long lasting.

"Upon his
return, President Talabani will call for a meeting that brings together
the different political blocs to discuss the political crisis in the
country," Kurdish MP, Hassan Jihad, confirmed. "Calls that the President
made during his stay outside Iraq have borne fruit."

There
are various issues that have meant that almost no significant work has
been done by the Iraqi Parliament over the past few months.

One
of these involves the so-called Erbil Agreement, a power sharing deal
formulated in 2010 in the northern city of Erbil, that broke the
political deadlock after elections resulted in two major political blocs
with almost equal power. The opposition Iraqiya party, headed by former
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayed Allawi, says that the conditions for power
sharing have not been met by the ruling State of Law bloc; the latter is
headed by current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Are people really trusting that Jalal will somehow help?

He
fled to Germany after he killed the no-confidence vote. Without the
threat of a no-confidence vote, why the hell would Nouri do a damn
thing?

And you're pinning your hopes on a
National Conference? WIth Talabani and Speaker of Parliament Osama
al-Nujaifi both calling for one, it never happened.

What's changed? Why would it happen now?

The
Erbil Agreement, for those who've forgotten, was supposed to do what
everyone hopes will happen now. Does no one remember that?

Nouri
caused a political stalemate that lasted over eight months. The only
thing that (briefly) ended it was the US-brokered Erbil Agreement. And
then Nouri trashed it (after he used it to get a second term as prime
minister).

What is it Nouri wants now? What
do they have to offer him? A third term as prime minister? Is that
what it will take for a few weeks of all the political blocs getting
along?

It better be something because most
Iraq observers have repeatedly been wrong over and over. By contrast,
our observations stand. We were the first to publicly note Nouri's
paranoia and did so in 2006 which means we even beat the US State Dept
cables in noting how paranoid Nouri is. So what does it look like right
now?

Right now, even the US State Dept is
starting to freak. Right now, everyone's starting to realize that even
with the best US effort, there may be nothing here. Why? The best term
for Nouri is procrastination. What does he want in the next months?
What doesn't he have?

All he really wants at
this point is a third term as prime minister and, if he's given that,
Little Saddam al-Maliki loses "Little." He's a thug. He's always been a
thug. Fifty years ago, faced with this same situation, the US
government would have sent in an assassination team by now. Now the
scramble's on as they figure out how to appease the mini-tyrant that the
US government had hoped would be a more compliant puppet.

So
what kind of human rights are observed in the "new Iraq"? Hardly any.
The list of abuses is long and the tip of the iceberg is waves of
arbitrary arrests (over 1,000 monthly), torture and executions. All are
barely noticed by the world media and the US and British official
silence is rather convenient to cover up the crimes and chaos they
created. From time to time, they break their silence but only to justify
their act of aggression. Recently, when Archbishop Desmond Tutu pulled out of a seminar in protest over the presence of Tony Blair,
a statement was issued by Blair's office to justify the morality of his
decision to support the United States' military invasion of Iraq.The
statement reiterated the plight of Iraqis under Saddam's regime with no
mention whatsoever of the hundreds of thousands of victims of the war
and endemic abuses of human rights since 2003.The Nouri
al-Maliki government in Iraq with its human rights outfits is following
the same path. Its human rights concerns remain focused on the crimes
of the previous regime. So do most of the intellectuals and politicians
involved in the scramble for seats and favours in Baghdad. People who
for years before the invasion of 2003 were highlighting human rights
abuses as a reason to invoke war as a prelude to democracy and
transparency are now either totally silent or actively covering up the
current abuses, despite glaring evidence from international human rights
organisations.

That's what they've supported which brings us back to the issue of why anyone would claim credit for the state of Iraq today?

Finally, Jill Stein is the Green Party candidate for US president. Her campaign offers "Jorge Rojas on the American dream, Latino voters:"Just yesterday, ten undocumented No Papers No Fear Riders risked everything
by participating in civil disobedience at the Democratic
National Convention in order to expose the injustice of police/ICE
collaboration. After their arrest, Jill and Cheri urged people across
the country to tell ICE that these people deserve relief, not deportation. Today we share the story of Jorge Rojas, a Chilean-American student and Green Party supporter, as our first feature in a new series highlighting voices from our community. His story couldn't be more timely.My
name is Jorge Rojas. I am currently earning my Ph.D. in economics at
the University of Washington, but originally I am from Chile. I came to
the United States imagining it was the land of possibility, but the
reality I found was quite different. The American Dream is often
unobtainable, and for many, has mutated into a nightmare. This is
particularly true for misinformed Latinos seeking a land of endless
opportunity and who instead find discrimination. This discrimination is
often concealed by the corporate media and ignored by the political
machine.

The current American two-party system only
remembers these communities during election times - the rest of the year
they rant about deporting 'illegal' workers. Yet, many of these
'illegal' workers pay more taxes than America's wealthy. These workers
contribute their skills, labor, taxes, and above all their cultures to
American society.

The Green Party, and its 2012
presidential candidate, Jill Stein, has a history of standing for
neglected and disadvantaged Americans, not just during election time,
but whenever a helping hand is needed. Unlike other corporate-sponsored
parties, Jill Stein bravely stands for social justice and prosperity for
all.

The current two-party system refuses to enact
change, yet change has never been more necessary. It is time to take
action and build a better, fairer America. The philosopher John Dewey
once said, "The ultimate aim of production is not production of goods
but the production of free human beings associated with one another on
terms of equality." Jill Stein's campaign represents this necessary
freedom and equality.----------This
year, with a potential of 21 million Latino voters, both Mitt Romney
and President Obama are focusing large amounts of energy attracting
their attention and approval - especially so during their national
conventions which feature record numbers of Latino speakers and events.
Yet, Republicans are known for their staunch deportation and
anti-immigration policies; and, President Obama's time in office has
been marked by a record number of deportations (about 1.1 million
people) and continuing joblessness for 10.3% of the Latin-American
population.

The Green Party, on the other hand, has always stood
for every community. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and
her running mate, Cheri Honkala, have historically stood with and for
diverse populations regardless of immediate political agendas. (In fact,
Jill and Cheri were deeply involved before either of them even were
involved in elections). We're grateful for Jorge's support and if
elected, Latino interests will always be on the agenda!